DRM-crippled text —
p2pnet.net news:- While I don’t normally link to SlashDot stories, this one linking to an essay that documents why DRM causes copyright infringement is important.
Everyone should understand one thing, if nothing else: the only reason this debate over DRM as it applies to electronic text is still going on is simply because our opponents have what amounts to a quasi-religious and sometimes downright hysterical blind faith in the magic powers of DRM.
I’ve been saying this from the beginning, but I want to ensure those who don’t yet believe the obvious can read the explanation from more people.
DRM is incapable of stopping copyright infringement (in order to work it would need to violate the laws of physics), and only lowers the quality of the legal versions (deliberate defects in the encoding to reduce interoperability), and attacks the property rights of owners of information technology.
Media consumers are given the choice between paying money for a lower quality product, or paying nothing for a higher quality product that largely only costs ‘guilt’ since the changes of getting caught are small.
If the quality of the legal and illegal were at least the same, then people wanting to do the right thing (which is the majority) would choose to pay for their content.
Russell McOrmond – p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He's also the CLUE policy coordinator.]
[Below are three quotes from There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch on Jim Baen's Universe. He's talking chiefly about electronic text, but many of his points apply equally well to DRMd 'product' in general - Ed]:
Pirates rob bullion ships, they don’t rob grain ships. Electronic copyright infringement is something that can only become an “economic epidemic” under certain conditions. Any one of the following:
1) The product they want—electronic texts—are hard to find, and thus valuable.
2) The products they want are high-priced, so there’s a fair amount of money to be saved by stealing them.
3) The legal products come with so many added-on nuisances that the illegal version is better to begin with.
Those are the three conditions that will create widespread electronic copyright infringement, especially in combination. Why? Because they’re the same three general conditions that create all large-scale smuggling enterprises. And . . . Guess what? It’s precisely those three conditions that DRM creates in the first place. So far from being an impediment to so-called “online piracy,” it’s DRM itself that keeps fueling it and driving it forward.
And ——
A DRM-crippled text is a royal pain in the ass for legitimate customers. First of all, because you have to have the right software (and often hardware) to use Product A as opposed to Product B—since the publishing and software industries can’t agree on a common standard. And, secondly, because you have absolutely no guarantee that next year those same industries won’t make the software you purchased from them obsolete and thereby make the books you bought unreadable.
Can we say “eight-track tape?” “Beta-Max?” “Vinyl LPs?”
The buying public, by now, has long and bitter memories of the way the entertainment industries have shafted them over and over again, by introducing one technology, forcing everyone to adopt it—and then scrapping that technology in favor of yet another.
It’s no wonder the reading public had so stubbornly resisted electronic reading. As I said above, they are not morons. Contrast the ridiculous demands that the publishing industry tries to place on their electronic text customers to the joys and splendors of buying a paper book:
You do not need an “end user license.” Nope. Just buy the book with legal currency and you own it outright.
You do not need to buy separate software or hardware to read it. Nope. The only “software” you need is a pair of functioning eyes and a knowledge of the language the book is written in. Thazzit.
You now own a product that you can do any damn thing you want with. You can lend it to a friend, donate it to a library, use it for a doorstop or to swat a fly.
And ——
Don’t bother pirating my books, you pipsqueaks. I automatically put all of them up for free online about three months after the paperback edition comes out anyway. Because I know perfectly well that I’m generating far more sales from the wonderful—and dirt cheap—promotional value than I’m losing to so-called “pirates.”
Also See:
Ars Technica – IRS goes after eBay, wants info on seller earnings, February 25, 2007
Financial Times – Treasury aims to collect $2bn in extra taxes, February 19, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
February 26th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
The Baen Free Library is a great feature on the Baen Books website. Top authors such as Harry Turtledove, David Weber and John Ringo are all on the site and you can download full versions of their, and may other author’s, books. And the downloads come in serveral different formats.
It’s a great way to sample new authors by being able to read a full book in the comfort of your home. Far better than quickly reading a few pages in a bookstore.
—
Rincewind
February 26th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Another raeson why electronic publisshing is not working is that there is currently no equipment that beat the book in readability, ease of use and convenience.
The book is small, highly readable, very resiliant does not require battery and no ned to download stuff into it when you want to carry a story with you!
O course the DRM is the coup de grace particularly when they try to sell publique domain books protected with DRM!
They really think that people are stupid!